Miller: The recent election has us asking some fundamental questions — and that’s a good thing

I've been wondering lately whether the entire 2016 presidential election and its recent aftermath may have just been an elaborate publicity stunt dreamed up by some Madison Avenue marketing mastermind to drive interest in the Broadway musical "Hamilton."

It seems unlikely, I know, but consider the evidence. First, there was the very public brouhaha involving the cast of the show, Vice President-elect Mike Pence and President-elect Donald Trump's overworked Twitter account.

No sooner had the furor over this died down than a new one sprung up. A group of folks we'd never heard from before started calling themselves "Hamilton electors." Their goal was to use the little-known power of the Electoral College to change the outcome of this year's election, giving us a president who is neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton. This movement, though doomed to failure, gained surprising traction here in Colorado. One member of this year's Electoral College is a math teacher from Greeley. He gave serious thought to what the Hamilton electors proposed before deciding not to go along.

Why do these folks call themselves Hamilton electors? It turns out that Alexander Hamilton, who helped draft the Constitution, is the one who wrote the best explanation we have of the Electoral College.

Those words came in "The Federalist Papers." When they were first published they were signed by a pseudonym. But historians have since learned that they're the work of some of the most influential drafters of the Constitution. Specifically, they were written by Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. They were written as a series of explanations that were meant to encourage the ratification of the Constitution. They offer the best insight we have into what the founders of the American republic were thinking.

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"Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption," Hamilton wrote. "These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils."

Indeed, the Electoral College was meant — among other things — to serve as an obstacle to foreign corruption of our electoral process.

Coincidentally, there's quite a lot of talk lately about foreign influence — by Russian President Vladimir Putin — in the 2016 election.

So you see what I'm getting at? Another day, another story that you can't write without making at least a glancing reference to Hamilton.

This has to be some kind of guerrilla marketing publicity stunt, right?

Well, of course, it isn't a stunt. All these things are all too real. Indeed, they pose fundamental questions that most of us — including me — haven't really thought about in many years, if we've ever thought about them.

They're the kind of questions our Founding Fathers spent a great deal of time and energy wrestling with. How do you make a democracy function? What are the proper limits of democratic action in a republican form of government? How can we keep that government safe from corruption and meddling?

It's always dangerous ground to try to characterize with one voice what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Like us, their opinions varied greatly. And in many cases they evolved and changed. Still, I think it's safe to say that these men understood that these foundational questions aren't easy to answer.

Broadly speaking, many founders worried that unchecked populism could tear the country apart. They worried that the nation's most powerful offices would fall into the hands of a hostile government. Or that a wealthy class of Americans would rise up and take control, becoming royals. They worried just as much about a tyranny of the majority — that voters themselves would run roughshod over the very ideals of freedom, individual liberty and equality that gave birth to the nation.

Like none before it that I recall, this election has forced into our national consciousness these same fundamental some questions.

I'm glad we're all asking questions about the Electoral College. Whether we choose to change it or not, it deserves discussion. The same is true of all our public institutions. Undoubtedly 2017 will hold plenty of partisan bickering and no shortage of sloganeering from party hacks. But in between all that, I hope we'll thoughtfully consider and discuss among our friends, neighbors, family members and colleagues those fundamental questions.

In short, if a marketing slogan could sum up the message from what we've experienced recently, it might go something like this: Make America think again.